Staff Sgt. Frank Zavorka, 85, holds an Eisenhower jacket, a replacement for the one he received after crossing the Rhine River into Germany. Zavorka spent nine months marching across Europe starting in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. (Dan Cepeda/Star-Tribune)

Staff Sgt. Frank Zavorka, Cheyenne

Staff Sgt. Frank Zavorka, 85, holds an Eisenhower jacket, a replacement for the one he received after crossing the Rhine River into Germany. Zavorka spent nine months marching across Europe starting in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. (Dan Cepeda/Star-Tribune)

For decades on his farm in the Big Horn Basin, Frank Zavorka
slept in a separate bed from his wife, Ruth.

He worried he'd hurt her during one of his violent
nightmares.

That's what happens, he guesses, after nine months of marching
across Europe. Nine months of shooting, freezing and digging.

The nightmares lingered, worsening as he got older, until years
ago he found a support group in Cheyenne with other veterans who
heard screaming in the night. There he told stories he'd kept
inside for so many years.

The Army drafted Zavorka from his family farm in Yoder when he
was 18. They sent him to Wales to join the 75th Infantry Division,
among the youngest in the European theatre.

After two weeks in Ranger training he went to Belgium to join
the 106th Division days before the Battle of the Bulge in December
1944. By the time they arrived, German troops had decimated the
106th and were moving forward.

"Gosh, we were just kids, you know? We grew up in an awful big
hurry," he said.

Artillery hit for 30 days and then Germans attacked on land. The
Americans were outnumbered 10 to 1, but their semi-automatic rifles
out-powered the Germans' bolt action.

His company commander ordered the men not to surrender. No
matter what.

The commander heard about another company that gave up only to
be loaded in a truck, driven into the countryside and shot.

Don't give up for crying out loud, the commander said. You're
going to get killed anyway.

They fought, and when they weren't shooting, they were digging.
None of the men were prepared for 40 below zero temperatures and
feet of snow. To stay warm, Zavorka dug holes. He'd dig down under
the frozen ground, sometimes so deep he could barely climb out.

The men who didn't dig, who sat down to rest, were the men who
didn't make it through the night. When supplies didn't come they
gnawed on tree roots and mixed bouillon cubes into water in their
helmets for soup.

Less than two months later, the Battle of the Bulge ended.
Zavorka rose from a private first class to a staff sergeant as they
moved through Belgium. By then there weren't even enough men in his
original company of 248 to make a platoon of 48.

But they marched on.

Zavorka doesn't remember most of the town names. They all ran
together. But it wasn't the town names he needed to talk about.

Working their way toward Germany, Zavorka's division invaded a
town at night. Artillery shells launched Zavorka into the air. He
woke in the morning alone. His company had moved on in the night.
He couldn't move.

His right arm and leg were frozen solid in a mud puddle.

Zavorka loosened the bayonet from the end of his rifle and
chiseled the ice from around his body.

He found his division and started shooting again.

In another town, with another forgotten name, he remembers the
fighting was so fierce the river water ran red with blood. Both
German and American bodies littered the shores.

"Somehow we always managed to get replacements," he said.

One of the replacements was a man in his 40s, far older than any
of the 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds in Zavorka's company.

The man had been in a gang fight in Chicago and killed some men.
A judge ordered him to life in prison or hazardous duty. He chose
war and ended up alongside Zavorka.

"Us guys looked at each other and we asked, 'What the hell did
we do wrong?'"

Zavorka has learned to talk about even the hardest times, like
watching his group of friends slowly dwindled.

Three days before the war ended, the last of his four original
buddies died.

"He came over and said, 'Hey, Frank, looks like a few more days
and we will go home.'"

Then the artillery shells started again.

He stopped making friends after that.

By the end of the war, nine months, two showers and a Bronze
Star after Zavorka started marching, his company was sent home. He
stayed for another six months, ordered to level roads for troop
trucks and dig ditches for garbage.

When it was his time to leave, the Army asked him to stay. They
would raise his rank if he would collect dead soldiers and bring
their bodies back.

No thanks, he told them, he'd seen enough death.

He wanted to come home to Wyoming and marry Ruth.

Zavorka still meets with that group in Cheyenne even as his
nightmares have faded. Only three of the initial 24 members are
still alive.

Staff Sgt. Frank Zavorka, Cheyenne

Age: 85

Division: 75th Infantry Division

War Front: Europe, Battle of the Bulge

Family: Married 60 years before his wife's death four years ago;
four children

His words: "The support asked us if we wanted long johns. I got
some. Some guys said they wouldn't be caught dead in them. And they
were. They froze."

On the Web: Watch more of Zavorka's story and see profiles of
other veterans at www.trib.com/honor.

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